Tree of Savior Forum

A discussion on nerfing Linker

Class and Rank
#88

Name me another class, anywhere in this game, that has an ability that scales damage by a %. Quickcast is the only one I can think of, and it is in a similar ‘must take’ situation.

That is why Joint penalty is too powerful. This game is a world of linear growth, except for random instances of exponential growth. Quickcast’s attribute is a similar instance, there have been many people on these forums claiming that every Wizard should get Quickcast, as it will be a massive dps boost to the higher tier, more powerful circles.

Either everything needs to scale well, or nothing should.

#89

Scout’s Perspective Distortion, Cleric’s Guardian Saint (reduces incoming damage by %) any many attributes in other skills (Lethargy for strike damage).

#90

Yeah, since Sorc C1’s summon now needs babysitting from the player, I’m wondering whether I’ll choose Cryo C3 or Linker C2… The two trees seem nice V_v

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#91

I refute this assumption here.

I am sorry to break it to you, but Joint Penalty is not exponential, neither is Quickcast, Cloak, Meteor or any physical skill backed by 100% crit. What they are not, is additive; they are multiplicative.

You obviously haven’t seen overpowered if Joint Penalty is where you’re hung up. Joint Penalty is more convenient than overpowered.

Firstly, Joint Penalty does not scale damage, it scales DPS. Secondly, Joint Penalty merely changes the rules of how damage is applied thereby making all single target instances of damage AOE, and all AOE instances of damage two instances of AOE damage if, and only if, multiple targets affected by Joint Penalty are in the AOE. If perhaps the attributes were not only for electrical, earth and poison damage, I’d say that Joint Penalty is broken with attributes. Lastly, there are dozens of multipliers in this game which you label as random instances of exponential growth. Here are just a few…

Scout’s Cloak +50% physical damage on next skill.
Scout’s Split Arrow +100% damage on bouncing arrows.
Elementalist’s Meteor +300% damage.
Elementalist’s Electrocute +100% magic attack on frozen targets.
Wizards + 20% to 100% strike damage against lethargy targets.
Archer’s 2hbow attribute +100% damage to flying monsters.
Archer’s 1hbow attribute -25% physical defense to all targets.
Sadhu’s Astral Body Explosion +150% damage.

Viability of skills will remain if what I am told is true, that +100% Attribute is a two times multiplier of damage dealt (excluding some buffs) by a skill. Also, everything scales at about the same rate excluding physical classes who gain a rather generous boon of 1.5 times damage once they reach 100% critical chance, not including their critical attack.

I think Sorcerers are still good despite losing some of their pet control until C2. It may have been done to prevent the Sorcerer + Necromancer combo,or just to make Sorcerer C2 look better. If I were to play a Sorcerer now, I’d go W1P1L1P2S2.

1 Like
#92

Imagine a graph, where Y is total damage and X is skill uses. You could also make X skill uses/second.
An auto attack is Attack * X. It makes a line that rises off into the distance. This is linear.
A skill like Multishot is SkillLevel * Attack * X. This graph is still linear, but rises much faster. Multishot is mutiplicative by Skill level. It would be best represented in a 3d graph with an axis of Z: skill level. The graph however, is still linear.

The formula for Lethargy, Quickcast and Joint Penalty is (1+(.2~1)or(.5)or(1))(the formulas of the damage of the skills used) * X. Or to write it a different way, 2 * (Attack * A + Attack * B + Attack * C…) * X. This graph rises faster and faster as you use more skills, and can basically reach whatever limit you desire. These skills are multiplicative by the dps of other skills. I call them Exponential because the formula is basically (constant * X) * X.

To say that a skill like Meteor is on the same scale is laughable. All that is is 4 * Attack * X * AoE.
Why are you even bringing up attack skills here? They aren’t a buff that effects the damage of other sources, they just hits harder than some other skills. Meteor is ‘basically’ the same single target damage as level 4 Multishot.
The only ones you should have mentioned are Quick cast, Lethargy, Perspective Distortion, Cloak and maybe Archer’s flying damage.
Even then, those all fall short of Joint penalty, as they are all specific.
Joint penalty deals at least 100% bonus damage to the linked monsters, no matter the damage type, and will stack with everything we have listed.

One thing you don’t seem to understand is that +100% on linked targets is a worst case scenario. The best case is where only a few of the linked monsters are hit, such as when playing with a Wugashi.
In a 5 link, that Wugashi’s normally single target damage is effectively +400%. In a 10 link it is +900%
Or hell, a Rogue. Be playing with a Rogue with the full backstab suite and let them hit 5 monsters for 100k.

This is an incredibly naive statement. Compare Multishot and Heavy Shot and think about what you have said.

Math argument offshoot of Nerfing Linker Thread
#93

QuickCast, JP and other multipliers are just multipliers. They dont make skill damage scale exponentially. Yes, if you stack multipliers it’ll become a rather absurd amount of damage, but graphic is still linear constant*X, where X is Attack and constant is result of all multipliers.

Also many multipliers are counted additive to each other instead of multiplicative which greatly reduces their efficiency: JP’s +50% electrical attribute and +50% from electrical attack due to monster’s weakness will become +100% instead of 1.5*1.5=225%.

Even JP is just a x(number of linked targets) multiplier for single target skills and x2 for AoE for each target that is inside that AoE zone (if 2 or more targets are inside) and acts as an extention of AoE range for those that arent.

At no point it becomes an instance of constantXX as you claim it to be.

Math argument offshoot of Nerfing Linker Thread
#94

Offshooting the math bits over here.

Joint Penalty’s main effect is not additive with any other multiplier. It will add between 100% and 900% total damage to any skill targeting the linked monsters.

#95

I didn’t know you could write blank posts. ( ・ω・）

1 Like
#96

Doesnt make it anything more than just multiplier that doesnt really work during bossfights in a class that doesnt have any damaging skills himself.
I’ll reiterate: moving HK to C2 is enough to make C1 linker MUCH less appealing.

1 Like
#97

As I’ve pointed out multiple times:
If the boss summons anything, JP is one of the best ways to clear those out with little to no effort, and it will apply extra damage to the boss for as long as those things survive.

And alright, Hangman’s Knot is now a c2 skill.

How are the skills ordered now? C1 only has 11 skillpoints in it.

C1: Unlink, Joint Penalty, Physical Link

C2: Hangman’s Knot, Spiritual Chain

C3: Lifeline

#98

Thats another problem of linker - lack of skills. Compare it to other classes that get 4 skills at C1 then 2 skills at C2 then 1-2 skills at C3.

2 Likes
#99

Unless the boss summon has an extremely high hp, Linker’s JP can be equivalent to a skill that deal extra damage to boss equal to the highest hp of the summon. While this may change in the future, as for current there is many other classes that can deal more damage than that.

In grinding, JP is equivalent to killing 5 monsters every cast, and it took a rank for you to actually to do that. Having Linker C1 will just help your party to kill extra 5 monsters every JP cd, which there are many other classes that can do better than that, until the monsters became so strong that it couldn’t be killed that fast.

In PVP, yes JP seems strong as you can focus down on a target instead of all your enemy. But, JP is dispellable, and it’s unlikely that a party will actually stand close enough for your JP to works everytime, so Linker C1 is probably just equal to a few tick of extra damage to your enemy team.

My conclusion is that unless the game get much harder, Linker C1 isn’t really OP. Yes, Linker C1 has great potential to become OP depending on the enemy design, but as of current the extra damage dealt by JP can be outdone by selecting many other classes.

2 Likes
#100

Hasn’t it been confirmed that the game gets much harder in KOBT? That whole ‘200+ content requires party play’ thing they have going on. We had bits of that in the OP lizard archer style of monster.

#101

Lizard archer don’t require linker, but healer to deal with them though. There are still classes that can deal with 5 of them easily, except that they need heal now and then.

If the meaning of harder is higher damage, and not higher hp, it’s healer that’s being needed, not linker.

#102

Harder content means tankier monsters, tankier monsters means damage buffs are more worthwhile.

Heck, Physical link might become required just because nobody can handle the kind of damage stuff is tossing around.

#103

I don’t see any reason to act like linker is top DPS, as if it’s the only source of high DPS in game atm.

There are enough OP class combinations that when used properly are more useful than having a linker around.

Outside of an instance, in general lvling, a linker is not all that useful. In an instance, you are generally pulling smaller groups of mobs and killing them ( typically killing 5 quickly helps a lot, so linker is very good ). In general lvling, at higher lvl zones, you are pulling 20-30 mobs, and killing them. Killing 5 quickly doesn’t really gain you that much.

#104

It’s hard to say. We have to see when it came out.

Still, it depends on how much faster linker + party can kill the 5 monsters compared to party member of other classes. Also, linker will only become more useful on some maps, not every map and not in field boss.

If a tanker can’t handle the high damage from the monsters, I doubt if the lower hp class can withstand those damage from physical link even if it’s 1/5 of the damage, because it’s easier to heal just one member with high hp than to heal many members.

Yeah, but if you have a good DPS AOE wizard in your party such as pyro 2/3 or ele 3 (which is a fairly common wiz build), it’s better to lure a bigger group than just a few monsters.

#105

Another reason why a pure DPS wizard is going to be stronger than having a linker in your party :smile:

#106

A rogue at level 200 can hit for more than 100k damage on a single target.

A rogue with a linker nearby can deal more than 100k damage to 5-11 targets.

Who deals more damage, the Linker, or the Rogue?

At any rate, are you guarenteeing that all future content will be either single boss killing, or fighting many, many monsters?

If you are fighting between 2 and say, 10 very strong monsters that you can’t kill within a few skills, or which deal tons of damage, Linkers will be very useful in shutting them down at at least double speed.

How so? I wasn’t aware we even had a targeted heal, I thought we just had Heal, Mass Heal, Restoration, Aukuras, and potions. All of which are more effective at healing groups than single players.

#107

No, I’m working off of what I’ve experienced, in the CBTs. Currently those are the two situations you optimize for. How can you have a discussion on nerfing linker if you’re not working with current valid information? What, because sometime in the future grinding might be balanced around fighting fewer monsters rather than mobbing up a large amount? That discussion can be had when that actually happens.

For a linker + rogue, that’s a nice damage combo. Killing 5 strong monsters instantly isn’t all that amazing, as most DPS classes + a linker can do that anyways. Killing 11 monsters is quite a bit nicer, but as I’ve said I believe that if you invest in going linker C3 that you should be that strong. Linker C2/C3 are not a problem.